2008/05/08

My parents kept me from children who were roughWho threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes.Their thighs showed through rags. They ran in the streetAnd climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.

I feared more than tigers their muscles like ironTheir jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms.I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boysWho copied my lisp behind me on the road.

They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedgesLike dogs to bark at my world. They threw mudWhile I looked the other way, pretending to smile.I longed to forgive them, but they never smiled.